a lil angry and a lil happy

I had a horrible time with Secret Pal 13. My spoiler? AWESOME. She's yet to reveal herself, but I loved everything she sent me (Knitting magazine WHAAAT), and she was super-generous. Thank you spoiler!!! Other than that though? NIGHTMARE. I won't be doing SP for a long while.



But enough of that. LOOK. I knit these just in time for the weather to warm up here in Vancouver - go figure. They're Noro Silk Garden sockweight, and they actual MATCH. *gasp* I'll post better pics when I find the stupid cord for my camera - argh.

I'm at Starbucks, apres being at The Grind for a ravelry meetup - met some pretty awesome chicks. I like being in a coffee shop on my laptop. Lately I've found the weekends with the girls pretty challenging, but this weekend has been great. No screaming about eating their food. No hitting/biting. Can I just crate train them?

No? Oh... umm. Okay.

whoa, three weeks?

Alright, I realize I fail at the blog thing, since my last posts were waiting as drafts. Ugh. Sorry for the influx of posts.

It's been nearly three weeks since the last time I updated and wow, life is weird.

+ I started doing contract work (lol.. for those of you in the know, shutit)
+ I like working from home, but find it incredibly isolating as well
+ LSG (that's Lazy, Stupid and Godless for those of you Ravelry folk) has been great.
+ Knitwear designers/indie dyers that fake their deaths should eat it for real. Especially when tugging on the heartstrings of LOTS of people by claiming it was a death from lupus.

I'm spinning again! Spent pretty much the whole afternoon and most of the evening with Nadia yesterday. She brought over her spinning wheel too, but had dropped one of the legs on the ground so she didn't spin. BOO.

Regarding the spinning, I am in LOVE with wheel spinning. Why did no one mention how much *faster* it is?! I suppose because it seems like common sense, but man, this is amazing. Rabbitch has loaned me her Ashford Traditional, by way of Jelaina, by way of Mrs. Q. I'm seriously considering getting a traddy for myself, as well as joining a local spinners/weavers guild.





I've been knitting up a storm, as evidenced by the pile of UFOs in the picture up there (under the Noro Striped Scarf). They all just need to have their ends woven in, and then.. uhh.. world domination? Click through on the picture above to see all my stuff tagged.

Today is Talia's 9th birthday - surreal! She is growing up to be quite the young lady!

SP PACKAGE!!!

I got my SP package today!!!!! and may I say that "George".. a fellow Canadian!... has outdone themselves!

I opened it up and my absolute favourite needles came tumbling out - some Hiya Hiya DPNS! Also a beautiful Christmas Tree ornament - a little knit mitten with glitter all over it. Included was a calendar that has a bunch of highlighted knitting patterns (love IT! It's hanging in my Yarn Nook right now). The most apropos colourway of Tofutsies for myself that I've ever seen - really. I love red!

One cool thing is that the package had these air bubble things - ingenious, really. Instead of using packing peanuts, it's a little plastic bubble of air that you can reuse on future packages. Environmentally-safe AND reusable! Perfect.

Thank you, thank you! I'd post a picture, but it seems that one of the munchkins may have wandered off with my camera again..

I am exhausted

So, I decided to meet up with Heather for a pre-Sale breakfast and think to myself "Oh, whatever. The sale won't be that crazy, will it?", it being my first TBF sale. I had to pass the yarn shop on my way there and WOW. At 9am there were nearly 20 people lined up and the doors didn't open til 11! I was rethinking the plan, but when I got to breakfast, we got a bit carried away with talking and before we knew it, it was close to 11am.

We left the diner and go two stores away when we run into more knitting folks, just having come out of my favourite coffee haunt - the Grind. yay! Let's walk together. By now, it's raining/snowing ("snaining, as the kids call it) and my handy HUGE umbrella comes in handy!

We get in line and stand there... and shuffle forward, barely. The shop next to the yarn store is a Paint store and their employees came out several times in an awestruck stupor. Repeating something about the apocalypse. Looking out the window with the cordless phone in their hands, gesticulating wildly about the knitters. I can only imagine their next marketing ploy - YARN.

[insert image ganked from someone else's blog in the near-future as my camera is MIA]


(Thanks Mrs Q!)

That's me just over the person in the green windbreaker. At this point, I was full-up on cupcakes, and rearing to go. Time? About 1 p.m. Not bad, in line for 2 hours at the point...

FAST FORWARD 2.5 hours later and I'm just paying for my purchases. I won't speak of the horror that happened to my bank account, but to put it into perspective, I *saved* $75. Yeah...

Hi, my name is Sara. I'm a yarn addict and I love Three Bags Full. I also fully plan on taking my water bottle with me to the next TBF Sale. Wowza.

Animal Crossing

I haven't been doing much knitting, admittedly. I plan on starting after this weekend though, since the Three Bags Full belated Boxing Day sale is going on this weekend! EEEE. I plan on FINALLY getting my hands on some Aquarella. Nomnomnom. I don't have much to work with, since I lost my job :( but that's okay. It seems like the universe is trying to send me other opportunities, and I'm just fine with that.

For Christmas, my dad and stepmom bought the girls Animal Crossing: City Folk and it has been dominating my mind ever since! I was a major fan of the Gamecube version!

Look:



Yeahhh.. that's a LOBSTER. :D I may or may not have squealed when I pulled it out of the water. I realize that may take away some Cool Points (TM), but... it is what it is.. ;)

Music

Oh, my fiance (*giggles*) is amazing, have I mentioned that lately?

He is a band teacher, and I got to see his first concert right before Christmas. Check this out:



They played "Walking in a Wonderland", "Seven (lol) Days of Christmas" and "Let it Snow", paired with the choir.

It wasn't hard to tell that I was with him. Either that or I looked like a proud parent whose heart was going to beat out her chest with pride!!

Is this thing on?

Wow, sorry for the blog silence. Terrible, terrible. *smacks self*

2008 In Review!

+ Officially moved in with Trev and the girls into our own big place
+ Went to Newfoundland over the summer - got to introduce the entire side of my mom's family to Trev.
+ Started spinning for really real.
+ Quit my job at eBay
+ Got engaged!
+ Only managed to be sicksick only a few times - which is amazing.
+ Really bonded with Trev's family - feel quite close to his mom and sister now!

- My grandfather was diagnosed with prostate cancer
- My mom's health is rapidly decreasing
- Pretty broke


I've realized something about myself as I'm getting older - I'm becoming more and more thankful for the abundance that's in my life, regardless of the hardships that I've endured. Things could really be worse! As I was pushing our car out of our street last week (EPIC SNOWFALL), I got in the car and I was puffing and panting. I turned to Trev who gave me a semi-frown as though to ask if I were okay, and I smiled at him and said "Can you imagine if we didn't have a car? Or a house to live in?"

And we took off to spend the night at his ex-wife's house. We are blessed.